


Don't ask me what could have been

by lilacsupreme



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: Angst, Death, F/F, yeah its pretty sad idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 14:53:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29718858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsupreme/pseuds/lilacsupreme
Summary: You're a ghost in the house where you died while visiting Billie's work. Billie visits the house for one last time.
Relationships: Billie Dean Howard/Original Female Character(s), Billie Dean Howard/Reader, Billie Dean Howard/You
Kudos: 5





	Don't ask me what could have been

**Author's Note:**

> Literally wrote this in record time, I've never finished anything so quickly before lmao, anyway I challenged myself to write without dialogue, and honestly I might do it again because I enjoyed this entirely too much :)  
> Disclaimer: I do not own these characters.

Your death had been an accident.

Wrong place, wrong time. An unsettled ghost that you’d simply gotten too close to. Curiosity had indeed killed the cat after all, and now it had taken you too.

It was the first and last time Billie had requested you join her on a job, to watch her work. You’d eagerly accepted, excited to watch her work, slightly nervous about it being your first real experience with ghosts of any kind. She’d let you explore the giant house while she spoke with who she believed to be the problematic ghost, one of a small child.

It was in the bedroom you’d met the real ghost but he looked at sounded so real that you’d mistaken him for someone alive. His timidness soon turned to anger once he realised you weren’t there to held him, and you couldn’t even blurt out that Billie was just downstairs and that she could help. Everything happened so quickly. Too quickly.

Your last words were the whispers of her name but she had been too far away to have heard them. You’d slipped away without a goodbye. You still yearned for that goodbye, everyday you’d find the whispers of her name falling from your lips unconsciously, as if begging for her to hear you.

She couldn’t have helped. It didn’t help to ponder over what if’s.

Even so, you knew the memories of that day consumed her still. When she would wake from bouts of fitful sleep she’d reach out across the sheets for your comforting hand, your warmth, only to be met with none. She pined for your embrace, the way you’d coo her nightmares away with gentle kisses and your nails against her scalp.

The first smoking break she’d take at work, when the dew still clung to the delicately swaying grass and the mist of the morning had not yet cleared, she’d remember the way the droplets of tears would slip down the crease of your smile as your laughter rippled through your body.

Billie Dean couldn’t wear her pearls anymore. She couldn’t have them lay so close to her heart without the memory of you always sitting upon her lap, twirling them between delicate fingers and pressing a lingering kiss to her collarbone. Just as you always did when she wore them, which was why she wore them so often. She never got the chance to admit that to you. She wished she did.

They now lay untouched in a box beside the last book you’d been reading, unfinished. There was so much more of it you had yet to read. So much more life you had yet to experience.

When she’d open your wardrobe to the fading smell of your clothes, press a bunched up top in her fingers and bring it to her nose. Imagining that you were there, giggling and teasing about that specific habit, asking why she insisted on doing that when she had the real thing.

_Had_.

The past tense reminded her cruelly that you weren’t hers anymore. Weren’t anyone’s. Just weren’t.

No one was holding you, soothing you, making you laugh or stopping the flow of your tears. She ached to be able to hold you again. For one more time she would trade all her fame and success, didn’t care how cliché that sounded, because for you she would.

There were times she’d shrug on an outfit for a meal with her colleagues, turning as if to seek approval from you before her smile would faulter and her shoulders sag, and she’d have to fight herself to enjoy the meal in your absence. Her fingers pressing against her purse, and the knowing that your smiling photo lay just within. A photo she’d taken when you’d been unaware, that she’d kept to brush over and admire the way your cheeks would redden and crinkle, a silent laugh beaming over your face.

When she’d visit the house, you’d watch her from a distance. You didn’t trust yourself to be close to her. To be allowed to smell her, the lingering musk of her cigarettes and the sweet tang of her perfume.

She’d talk to you, telling you about her show and about celebrities she’d met on her travels and at events. You’d smile at her theatrics, the way she’d catch herself waving her hands around dramatically while in the throng of one of her stories.

She never spoke about meeting anyone. Not that you needed to be told that she wasn’t interested in dating. You could tell she’d thrown herself into her work to ease the insistent pain. The loss. You were proud of her.

On this particular day, the atmosphere was different. Eerie. You watched as she crossed the threshold into the property, hand lingering on the door a second too long. The other ghosts could sense it too, the change, and they scattered into the far corners of the house, leaving you alone with the woman who now ascended the stairs toward the bedroom she always zeroed in on, fingers tracing the wallpaper and cracked frames that hung.

You knew why she’d come. Knew why this time it felt so different. So final.

The thought of her leaving for good made your throat close up, sobs catching as you forced yourself to be stronger. To savour these fleeting moments in her presence as if they were to be your last. It was cruel to think that they would be.

In the bedroom she sat on the edge of the bed, as always, lips parting to hold a cigarette between teeth while she lit it with trembling hands. Oh how you wanted nothing more than to still them between your own, to comfort her.

You didn’t. Settling for simply watching her inhale deeply, the flickering trail of smoke that danced out of the crack in her mouth, dissipating into the air. You watched her lean to the side table to snub out the orange ember, fizzling out against the cool ash tray.

Approaching her, you knelt at her feet, the position you’d so often adopt when she’d had a trying day at work, head in her lap and fingers clutching at her pants while she’d stroke at your hair and relax. Your proximity to her felt so natural, like coming home. She felt like home.

She could smell your lingering perfume, as fresh as the day you’d died, enveloping her in your familiarity. Could feel the warmth of your breath against her neck, fingers reaching to brush over the goosebumps left. She swore if she just reached out, that she’d feel the curve of your jaw, a hand coming to rest upon hers as she’d caress your face.

She did, and her fingers curled around nothing, so she did it again, willing you to appear with the frantic clenching of her hand as if the more she did it the more likely you were to be. When her attempts bore no fruit, she let her arm drop limply to her side, a finality.

A small, sad smile painted her lips, and she suddenly looked so small and broken, like a child lost in the bustle of a crowd. Alone.

You wanted to reach for her too, to press the pads of your fingers against those lips, to tug at the edges and hold her until the smile was true again. But you couldn’t bring yourself to do it, an invisible string holding you back from her, one which you couldn’t sever.

You loved her.

You couldn’t, and wouldn’t shackle her to this house while she was alive, to you. You loved her more than the selfish desire that swarmed inside you to just appear to her and tell her to stay. You knew she would.

It was the best for her if she believed you weren’t here, so that the grief would slowly thaw and she’d be able to find peace. Move on. Maybe find someone else. _Maybe._

Billie Dean Howard. Medium to the stars.

God how you wished that the stars in her eyes would sparkle like they did when you were alive, and not just with the sheen of unshed tears.

Billie Dean Howard was the stars. She was the stars and the moon and the sun, the universe painted perfectly in silk and cigarettes. The stars would fling themselves to the ground for her, bowing in her presence.

Scrambling to your feet and out of her way when Billie had stood, she walked to the wall at the far end of the room, her back to you and you wondered what she was doing. She’d never done this on any of her other visits. You didn’t have to wait long to find out why.

You heard the whispered goodbye, bit back the tears that threatened to fall at the finality of it all. Watched her rest her forehead against the cool wall, as she so often used to do to you, fingers pressed into the wallpaper as if she wanted nothing more than to be sucked into the very walls of the house, to be trapped just as you were.

Billie turned around, looking straight at you as if you were as clear and bright as the sun, before reaching into the bag on her shoulder. The shimmer of her pearls held up against the low light of the room. She’d brought them to you. She _knew_ you were still here, watching. She knew what you were sacrificing for her freedom to leave and live and exist outside these walls.

You smiled. She was leaving a piece of her to you, a piece of you both to tie and strengthen the bond you shared, even in death. The faint clatter of the beads on the chest of drawers had you following her movements again, hands hovering over the line of her shoulder blades through the top she was wearing.

When Billie finally turned around, this was the closest you’d been to each other since your death. There was no way she could know your were there. Yet here she was, reaching up and cradling the air that would have been your face if you’d just let her in, as if you were as real as herself. As if she could see you, touch you.

As quickly as she’d turned, she was lowering her hands and gathering her things off the bed. She did it slowly, meticulously, as if rushing was breaking some unspoken rule. Unfortunately, she could only slow her movements so much, only put off her inevitable departure for so long.

You weren’t sure why, it wasn’t as if Billie was drawing any comfort from being in the room in which you’d died. You could see the pained way she’d glance at the spot she’d found you, the spot in which she’d curled herself into your body and cried for help to no one. The spot in which she’d learned how fragile life was, how quickly and cruelly it could be snatched from under someone.

You didn’t follow when she’d given a last fleeting look around the room, her footsteps echoed against the wood as she walked back toward the stairs to leave. Instead holding onto the image of her face in your mind, committing it to memory as the stairs creaked with her weight.

Out of the bay window, you could see the final sway of her hips, swish of her hair, golden now against the setting sun. She didn’t turn back to give one more pleading glance towards the house. You think that if she had done, she wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to leave.

You hoped that maybe, when the time came, Billie would return to you to die, wrinkled hands still holding the same warmth and gentleness that they always did for you. You hoped she’d remember the way your lips felt against her own, the way your bodies moulded perfectly as if designed for the very purpose of being close. You begged that she’d be drawn back in the final days, so that you could be together again, as you should be.

But for now, this was your goodbye. The goodbye you’d been robbed of.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!! Feel free to leave kudos or any requests you have <33


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